Demand growing across Europe for electric vehicles from China
According to figures from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, there are about 67,000 cars currently on the road that are fully EV or plug-in hybrid. File picture: PA
Electric vehicles (EVs) from Chinese firms are fast whetting the appetite of European motorists, as the continent sees massive increases in the number of electric and hybrid cars in the past four years.
That is according to the latest available findings from the European Commission's data analysis wing, Eurostat, which calculated the value of both imported and exported EVs to and from the EU.
Total extra-EU exports, or exports to countries outside the EU, of hybrid and electric cars came to €42bn last year, which was almost an 800% increase compared with the €4.7bn of 2017.
Conversely, the total import value increased by more than 400% from €5.6bn in 2017 to €29bn in 2021, Eurostat said.
Full EVs have seen huge growth percentages, the data show, with hybrid cars — a mix of fossil fuel power and electric — also seeing significant gains.
The value of imports of hybrid cars increased almost 800% and that of electric cars jumped 2,400%, the agency said.
China at 43% was largest origin of extra-EU imports of electric cars, followed by South Korea at 20%, the US at 17%, and Mexico at 10%.
Marketing EVs to customers' evolving tastes has seen Chinese companies steal a march on traditional car giants in recent years.
The country has the largest EV industry in the world, with companies like BYD now able to take on Elon Musk's Tesla for the label as the world's biggest EV maker.
Japanese firms are the leader in the EU when it comes to imported hybrid cars that do not need to be plugged in, while the US leads the way with plug-in hybrids.
When it comes to exports from the EU to other countries, non-plug-in hybrid cars were valued at €22.9bn, electric cars at €12.3bn and plug-in hybrid cars at €6.8bn.
Data from earlier this year showed the EU now has about 250m cars, with the highest number of cars per thousand inhabitants in Luxembourg, Italy, and Poland.
The number of battery-only electric cars in EU member states exceeded 1m for the first time in 2020, which was about 20 times higher than in 2013 and three times higher than in 2018, according to Eurostat.
Here, Environment and Transport Minister Eamon Ryan has said the ambitious plan to have 1m EVs on the road by 2030 was being revised downwards but he expected it to reach the 950,000-mark instead.
According to figures from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), there are about 67,000 cars currently on the road that are fully EV or plug-in hybrid.
More than 15,000 EVs were registered by October this year, or about 14% of all new registrations, and up from just under 10,000 last year.
The most popular brands of EV in Ireland are Volkswagen's ID4, Hyundai's Ioniq 5, Tesla's Model 3, Kia's EV6, and Volkwagen's ID.
EVs remain expensive upfront, and experts have said the easing of barriers to import readily-available second-hand cars from the UK must happen if Ireland is to get ahead.
Editor of IrishEVs.com Tom Spencer has repeatedly said the Government must remove Vat and vehicle registration tax (VRT) from second-hand EV imports from the UK to ensure there are enough affordable electric vehicles to meet the already significant demand.
